That’s going to be true of the polls taken a week before the election, but the results will be pretty close nonetheless.
The problem with analysis ignoring polls is that lack of factual grounding makes it super-easy to be guided by wishful thinking, or by catastrophizing thinking, should one be of a pessimistic temperament.
Granted completely. But in an era where turnout matters, asking “Who would you prefer to win: A or B?” is not reliable either. How to get better data then? If I knew I’d be hard at work getting famous (and wealthy) like Nate Silverman did.
The key point as applied to this thread is that while it is true that each voter only has one (legal) vote, the complete truth is that each legal voter has at most one legal vote. They can each vote zero times or one time. In the election in 2012, so pre-Trump, ~128 million people voted, including the ~2 mil who voted for somebody other than the D (Obama) or the R (Romney). At that time the US adult population was ~237M. Something like one half of the potential voting populace chose to vote zero times. The other half voted once.
A politician who generates enthusiasm, and especially net positive enthusiasm, and doubly especially net positive enthusiasm in swingable states is a very different critter from somebody OK whose chief voter attractant is having an (R) or a (D) after their name.
But this is before the all out war in the primary and in the convention between Trump and DeSantis. Those Republicans who voted in the DeSantis vs Biden poll, assumed that either Trump didn’t run or lost the primary and conceded gracefully. The proper question would be, “If Trump had evidence that the Republican party manipulated the vote to give DeSantis the nomination, would you vote for the Traitorous cheater DeSantis, vote for Sleepy Joe Biden, or would you write in Donald Trump the greatest president our country has ever seen”
Yeah, but I wouldn’t put it past Meatball Ron (assuming the unthinkable happens) to say, when someone shoves the pardon papers under his name, “Donald Who?!? Don’t think I’ve ever heard of him…I’ll have to review this.” Said papers subsequently ended up at the bottom of the nearest convenient birdcage.
A pardon for what? Has Trump been convicted of any federal crimes? Is he even likely to be? I thought most of his legal issues involve state crimes.
ETA: By the way… DeSantis will win the primary and the general election and become the next president. And the baby Jesus will weep.
The Republican Primary is going to be like one of those Faces of Death movies. Any debate will be ‘Must-Watch TV’.
Almost certainly yes for the document case, though who knows how severe the charges end up being there.
Not only that, but Trumpites are at odds with principled conservatives, despite claiming to be “conservative.”
You are forgetting how TFG’s brain cells work. If someone faces a legal challenge for something they did, he thinks a pardon will get them out of any entanglements, even before it goes to court. That’s how he thinks the legal system works, and why he was offering pardons to the J6 rioters before any of them were even charged for a crime.
So Meatball Ron could totally play TFG here: “Yeah, sure, I’ll issue your pardon the moment I am sworn in as President, in exchange for your support during my campaign” - without specifying what is being pardoned.
The Presidential pardon does extend to past activities for which you’ve not yet been investigated or charged, much less tried or convicted. Ford did that for Nixon.
The key distinction as it applies to TFG is that a Presidential pardon affects Federal prosecutions and crimes only; not state ones.
As @snowthx says just above, it’s not clear Trump really grasps any of this. Or whether he would listen to an advisor who told him that DeSantis’ pardon isn’t the complete wiping of all possible slates that TFG wishes it to be.
Clearly TFG conceives of the US President as an all-powerful dictator for life. DeSantis may have the same attitude. The only unreality in their mutual beliefs is that it isn’t true … yet.
I don’t see it. He has no personality. Democrats have been overperforming in every recent special election above and beyond 2022 margins. His endorsed candidate just got beat in Jacksonville for mayor, which is his home state and a city that has only had one other Democratic mayor since 1993. He’s a really odd person and very temperamental. Can’t handle any difficult questions. I don’t think he can pull moderates or independants. Big money donors are already expressing reservations due to his extreme anti-business policies. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m not going to worry about him yet.
Because Trump has not lost yet and started attacking the guy who beat him. When and if that happens he will immediately start claiming fraud and election stolen and go all in into destroying whoever beat him.
While this is absolutely positively true, I would be very, very circumspect about thinking it has any relevance to the 2024 federal elections.
The voters in special elections are a very different crowd from the voters in the national elections after a year+ of 24/7 rabble-rousing, legit news coverage, and everything in between.
You mean ragging on Biden? Again?
If he loses the primaries it would be Desantis he would be ragging on, not Biden.
Isn’t the conventional wisdom that the Republicans do better in off year elections due to low turnout among the left? That hasn’t been the case for a few cycles now. The extreme, hateful stuff is turning off everyone except the hardcore GOP base, but they have to go to ever more extremes to keep that base. How can they pivot back to the middle for the general election without being called RINOs? They can’t win primaries without catering to the crazies, but they can’t win a general election by catering to the crazies. I may be wrong here, but I just don’t think pushing trans genocide and erasing black history and banning books and antagonizing large companies like Disney is going to get any independent votes, and they cannot win without getting enough votes from the middle. Make America Florida is a horrendous slogan. I almost thought it was a joke, but apparently it’s real.
The country pretty much had this conversation in 1980, but with Republicans splitting away to vote for John Anderson. I even remember TV Guide having an election night grid that had a column to track Anderson’s electoral votes. In the end, he didn’t even come in second in any state, mainly because I think most of his support came from younger people (the choice was Anderson, double-digit inflation under Carter, or being drafted and sent to probably Iran or Afghanistan (El Salvador and Nicaragua weren’t really problems yet) under Reagan) who probably ended up having better things to do than vote.
Even in the reddest states, I don’t see Trump’s followers being strong enough to carry a state on their own. The biggest effect they would have is to split the Republican vote and swing an almost-certain red state blue, at least in the Presidential race…and for all I know, that’s what some of them want, so the door will be open for Trump to face, say, Harris in 2028.
I meant that as a joke. Sorry I played it a little too straight.
I totally get, and agree with, your point that if by some miracle Trump loses the R nomination fair & square he will do his utmost to destroy the R party and the R nominee. All of which will hurt the R candidate and help the D candidate in the Nov '24 election.
Probably the worst outcome for the country is if Trump loses due to actual skullduggery in/around the R nominating process. Even if it’s in the nature of legit technicalities. Something akin to the moral equivalent of the D’s superdelegates putting their thumb on the popular vote scale. The Rs do not have superdelegates as such. But there are certainly ways for various eminence grise to … affect … the outcome.
If that plays out, he & his tribe of followers will overdose on raging and lots of bad outcomes are next. Including significant SCOTUS interference in the Nov election itself.
And this is the reason so many in the Republican party still support TFG. They’re stuck supporting him, or they know he’ll blow-up the party. He’s got them by the short-and-curlys and they know it (as does he).
Super delegates are a mechanism intended to prevent some outlier candidate from sweeping in and taking over a party built from the ground up by others who have contributed a lot of time, energy and money to create that party. Someone like, say, Trump.
Republicans might want to give that a bit of a think next time they criticize Dems for using super delegates.